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SD45s Alive in Minnesota
Great Northern SD45 No. 400 Hustle Muscle is owned by the Great Northern Railway Historical Society and is on indefinite custodial loan to the Minnesota Transportation Museum. Delivered to GN in 1966, No. 400 was the first 3,600-h.p. turbo-charged 20 cylinder 645E3 production model SD45 diesel electric locomotive manufactured by EMD. As part of a photo charter weekend operated on MTM’s Osceola & St. Croix Valley, No. 400 poses on the bridge over the St. Croix River at Osceola, Wis. See page 38 for details. PHOTO BY NICK BENSON
near Toledo, Ohio. This is a remnant of the former Nickel Plate “Cloverleaf” mainline that ran from Toledo to St. Louis, Mo. The portion in the STB filing extends from milepost TS-13.2 to milepost TS-15.0 at Waterville. Midwest Rail originally obtained authority to operate the line in 2012, along with the portion of the line owned by Toledo, Lake Erie & Western Railway and Museum, but it never developed any business and eventually defaulted on the lease. See page 15 for details.
UNION PACIFIC KEVIN SNYDER
UP Responds to PTC Deadline
In early September, Union Pacific president and chief executive officer Lance Fritz sent a letter to Sen. John Thune, chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, responding to a request the chairman made for information on
the railroad’s progress with Positive Train Control (PTC) installation. In his letter, Fritz made it clear
that although the railroad has made significant progress and put all sorts of effort toward complying with the 2008 mandate by the December 31, 2015, deadline, “we will not make the installation deadline.” Fritz did, however, stress that the rail-
road has invested $1.8 billion through June and expected to spend another $200 million for the balance of 2015. Moreover, the railroad had hired 1,000 employees to implement the technolo- gy, develop the necessary software, and work with more than 50 vendors to de- velop or acquire components. By the time of this September 9 letter, UP had installed PTC hardware and software along 13,480 miles out of approximately 20,000 miles that require the technolo- gy, with this 20,000 mile target repre- senting about two-thirds of the entire network. Also, the railroad has at least partially installed PTC hardware on 4,500 locomotives of its fleet of 6,500. If Congress did not extend the end of
2015 deadline, Fritz warned, the railroad would embargo all “toxic by inhalation gas” (TIH) traffic and passenger traf- fic on its railroad with a TIH embargo notice being issued prior to Thanksgiv- ing and long distance passenger trains ceasing to originate several days ahead of December 31 to ensure that all pas- sengers reach their destinations ahead of the deadline. Among the impacts of these decisions, Fritz explained, were significant disruptions to the economy with industries and consumers unable to receive key commodities as well as hun- dreds of thousands of commuters being forced onto already gridlocked highways. As of press time, Congress had not extended the December 31 deadline, although fellow Class Is like BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern, CSX Trans- portation, and even major commuter railroads such as Chicago’s Metra had also expressed similar concerns to Sena- tor Thune and his committee. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Com- mittee introduced a bipartisan bill on September 30 that would extend the deadline through the end of 2018.
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